10 Sci-Fi Movie Deaths That No One Saw Coming

Released in 1995, Twelve Monkeys is a dark and underrated sci-fi satire from the twisted mind of former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam. The film sees Bruce Willis travelling back and forth in time, to little avail, in order to avoid the release of a deadly disease that will wipe out much of planet earth.

There’s a lot more to it, including stable time loops, the eponymous secret society, and lots of paranoid anti-consumerism ranting from a pre-Fight Club Brad Pitt. But even after the director’s similarly bleak and hopeless earlier blackly comic satire Brazil, few saw this film’s gut punch ending coming.

Spoilers in one, two, this is twice now with Looper that Bruce Willis has travelled in time to see himself die, and three…

No one saw the sudden, brutal death of Bruce Willis’ doomed hero coming in this time loop thriller, with the inevitable and awful conclusion rendering the entire film a loop of itself, another chapter in an ever-repeating tragic pattern that makes The Butterfly Effect’s alternate ending look cheery. The sight of an innocent man gunned down by cops through no fault of his own is one few films could pull off, and this one is utterly heartbreaking.